Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday September 28, 2012 @05:32PM
from the effort-was-too-much-effort dept.

An article at Nintendo Gamer highlights how Electronic Arts put almost no work into the latest Wii release of their FIFA soccer game franchise, but didn't hesitate to push it out the door anyway. Side-by-side screenshots show the Wii version of FIFA 12 got some minor graphical tweaks — a different splash screen, slightly modified logos, different colored socks on the players — before being re-released as FIFA 13. From the article:
"This is something that needs to be highlighted, because while it would be easy to pass it off and say 'meh, it’s just the Wii version,' the fact remains that this game does still sell relatively well. This isn’t guesswork – as journalists we receive confidential sales figures and though we’re legally bound not to reveal those figures, we can at least say with confidence that FIFA 12 did pretty well for a Wii game this close to the console’s death. The Wii U version of FIFA 13 will no doubt be a fantastic game, since it’ll share a lot (if not all) of the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions’ features. The 3DS version is a solid improvement over last year’s effort, and worth a look if you’re into some handheld football action. This, however – a £30 roster update – is unacceptable."

Well first of all, programming the game isn't free, so even with fake teams, it wouldn't be free. Additionally, it's not like the NFL (or MLB or whoever) charges EA some amount of money per license sold. The terms would be more like EA pays X million dollars in exchange for exclusive rights for Y years. Given those terms, it doesn't make sense to sell versions of the game without the real rosters.

EA has a habit of doing this on systems they don't like or want to support. before they killed off NHL on the PC (fuck them for that)they released absolutely horrible versions of the game on the PC claiming it was because of "piracy" when it was really just about terribly production values. Their last version on the PC was a PS2 port when the Xbox 360 and PS3 were getting far superior versions because EA claimed the PC was not "next generation"